Plant-Pathogen Interactions and the Climate-Agriculture Nexus
Event Details
- Type
- Center for Studies in Physics and Biology Seminars
- Speaker(s)
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Benjamin Weiner, Ph.D., fellow, Center for Studies in Physics and Biology, The Rockefeller University
- Speaker bio(s)
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Like all multicellular organisms, plants have an immune system which protects them from pests and pathogens. Understanding the plant immune system is important from the standpoint of both basic biology and global food security, as experts estimate that 20-30% of global yields for important crops are lost to disease. Many of the genes involved in immunity have been identified, and we have begun to measure how the relevant proteins interact. However, we lack a framework for how the molecular interactions give rise to a functioning immune system. This hampers our understanding of plant-pathogen coevolution and impedes attempts to engineer more resilient crops. For example, although several sensing architectures have been identified (“direct recognition,” “guard-guardee,” “guard-decoy,” etc.), it remains unclear what evolutionary forces maintain this diversity. Here we find that a simple model based on molecular interactions explains a broad range of experimental observations. Nonlinear feedback leads to sharp immune activation, and the mystery of “effector interference” is shown to be a natural consequence of molecules competing for binding partners. We find that different sensing architectures obey functional trade-offs between complexity, sensitivity, and antivirulence, and we predict how the broad-spectrum defense gene ZAR1 will respond to multiple attacks at once. Finally, we contextualize these results within the broader nexus of climate and agriculture.
- Open to
- Tri-Institutional